THE TERRAN INDEPENDENT
TERRORISTS ATTACK TECH CON HEADQUARTERS
WING CITY, TERRA -- First one, and then two explosions rocked the heart of Wing City's business district on property owned by Langara-based corporation Tech Con Industries. Tech Con mercenaries, Scatterran forces, TAF personnel, and NPA tactical units responded to an apparent terrorist attack. Citizens could see Terran gunships, two of which were shot down in fiery explosions, all while hearing the steady report of heavy weapons fire between the terrorists and local forces.
Tentative numbers put at least thirty-four dead and eighty wounded. The first explosion blew out the windows of the one hundred sixty story tall, newly constructed Tech Con Headquarters in a massive fireball; the second explosion obscured much of Hagan Avenue, named for former Tech Con CEO Miles Hagan, from view for up to eleven kilometers away. NPA personnel have taken control of much of the site and refuse to permit journalists or non-crime scene personnel beyond police boundaries.
No further information is available at this time. The NPA has not yet released an official statement, but Acting Director Abdalhaq Mulavi is expected to give a statement this evening.
OP-ED: IS TERRA'S DEMOCRACY IN DANGER?Attorney General Luis Roberto Galdámez y RosaWhat happens when a nation-state gains sovereignty and independence? In some cases, we see from history, the country's newly-established government quickly dissolves into warring factions along ethnic or religious lines. We witnessed that with repeated wars between the states that later became India and East and West Pakistan, the formation of Colombia, the nascent Israel and its neighbor state Palestine, and both Yugoslavian experiments. In other cases, we see the results of a tenuous hold on independence in the form of political instability with changes in regime, coups, and political violence, as was the case with Sierra Leone, Peru, and Lebanon.
But fledgling democracies, or states that proclaim to be democratic in their political system and form of governance face unique challenges of transitioning from occupation or colonialism to independence, establishing a just and fair government, allowing efficiency in government matters, pre-empting corruption before it appears, avoiding the development of an inefficient bureaucracy, allowing the formation of opposing political parties and public discourse on issues of importance, engaging the public in civic life, establishing foreign policy and military doctrine, establishing a set of laws to enumerate crimes and create regulations, and, perhaps most importantly in terms of foreign affairs, gaining and keeping the respect of other nation-states of the newfound independence.
Sometimes, newly-created states fail in many of these respects. States may be created or gain independence with the publicly declared intention of establishing a democratic (or at least fair) form of government, only to see that ideal give way to tyranny, totalitarianism, and despotism. Other states never truly earn the respect of legitimacy from the international community, and suffer repeated violations of sovereignty or even outright invasions.
Both occurred with the Dominican Republic, which after declaring its independence in 1844, was invaded four times by neighboring Haiti through 1856. The Dominican Republic's first governments were fractured by extreme factionalism and competing local powers. Dictators gave way to regimes that fell almost as quickly as they were installed, with power resting mostly in the hands of regionalized
caudillos, political-military leaders operating outside a central government structure. By 1930, the Dominican Republic would see its most infamous era under General Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, who ruled for thirty-one years with an authoritarian, military government in a state that was far from democratic.
We saw this pattern again in the Kingdom of Cambodia, granted independence in 1953, which took less than twenty years for a military coup to occur and a civil war to ensue in its wake. In 1975, five years after the military coup that ousted the prince, the notorious Khmer Rouge regime took power, and established a Marxist-inspired government that set about genocide against the ethnic Chinese in Cambodia and forcibly relocating all of Cambodia's urban population into rural areas to work in state-owned and managed rice fields. This dictatorship, under Pol Pot, was known for its brutal suppression of dissidents, even suspected threats from within the Communist party itself, where those accused would face torture and death in secret prisons or the killing fields.
In another example, when El Salvador, along with neighboring Central American countries, gained independence from colonial Spain in 1821, its early years were marked by Mexican aggression seeking to establish a Mexican empire including the other nascent states in Central America. Its government initially developed into an oligarchy and later a presidency that, although occasionally interrupted by turnover in regimes, was politically stable until 1913 when President Manuel Enrique Araujo was assassinated. After Araujo's death, regimes saw rapid turnover and multiple coups that escalated to violence against rural resistance to military leader Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, ostensibly elected in one-candidate elections, in 1931 and following years. El Salvador devolved into arbitrary violence against civilians, mass resistance to the regime and later the junta that came to power in yet another coup in 1979. This failed experiment in democracy, marked by torture and brutal repression of dissidence, culminated in a twelve year civil war.
Lastly, let us look at Syria, which gained independence in 1946 with a fledgling republican government intended to be representative of the people. In its first ten years as an independent state, Syria created four different constitutions and was ruled by twenty different cabinets that came to power in a series of coups. For three years between 1958 and 1961, Syria ceded its independence to unite with Egypt in a single state, but ultimately seceded, creating a breeding ground for innumerable coups over a period of two years before the Ba'ath party took control in 1963, shortly after the same party took control of neighboring Iraq. Rule under the Ba'ath party was marked by factionalism and tension, and a well-entrenched dictatorship.
So what is a nation or a state, or for that matter, a nation-state? A nation-state is two things: firstly, it is a nation, comprised of a distinct group of people who live in community with one another, whether for geographic convenience or shared cultural norms, including religious or national (ethnic, it is sometimes called) identity; secondly, it is a state, which is a government holding power or jurisdiction over a given geographic area and people to lead and protect.
Across Terra, citizens of this fledgling democracy, particularly those familiar with historical patterns, are reticent to permit the newly-established government much power beyond what it currently possesses in terms of conducting foreign affairs, hearing criminal cases, and maintaining forces for national defense. This is why the Terran electorate overwhelmingly elected candidates from the Libertarian-Conservative bloc, a political platform that promotes small government and great personal and economic liberties without government regulation of either. With a Libertarian-Conservative majority, there should be, at least in theory, little risk of the development of an authoritarian oligarchy or military dictatorship.
But we are already seeing certain patterns from the historical examples of failed states or states that resorted to dictatorship, violation of human rights, and repression of civil liberties. As opposed to a stable, well-established government where public discourse focuses on the relative political platforms and positions of elected and appointed officials, and readily accepts changes in transfer of power from one to another elected or appointed official without much concern for the individual in question, our public discourse has centered primarily around key figures within the government as icons of personality. This is dangerous because it leads to factionalism and internal conflict, and ultimately, the development of deep-seated political rivalries.
Instead of our government establishing a firm set of codified laws and consistent court system, inconsistency is rampant. Without much oversight and a weak central structure, Terran courts have become places where the wealthy and powerful can easily escape serious charges and demand ridiculous reparations from civil plaintiffs. The law itself is weak; the National Police Agency enforces the laws capriciously and without established procedures. There is one manual of operation for NPA agents, and it conspicuously lacks segments on rule of law and ethical behavior for individual agents. I am assured by the NPA's Acting Director, Abdalhaq Mulavi, that this will change, but that was two weeks ago and I have seen no documents crossing my desk to that end.
The Terran Intelligence Bureau operates semi-autonomously -- a generous allowance -- from the rest of the Terran government. It does not report to Parliament; its Director has never given Mulavi a briefing on national security matters, and regularly acts with impunity in direct contradiction to Prime Minister Cranford's stated policies, often contravening Parliamentary edicts only to receive legitimized approval afterward. The amount of power and influence resting with the TIB is frightening to any scholar of democracies. When intelligence agencies collect the amount of information that the TIB does and shares as little of it as does the TIB, it is a red flag for the development of what is essentially a secret police force, or a potential challenger in a future coup against the existing government.
Parliament itself is overly cautious. While the Libertarian-Conservative bloc may wish to keep the government out of private affairs -- such as personal choices in marriage partners, public religious practices, or choices in educating one's children -- and economic matters, it is imperative that Parliament begin to formulate an actionable foreign policy with the increasingly critical areas of concern surrounding the Aschen Confederation's civil war, the open hostility of Tauron and Hadante to Terra, the repeated aggression and defiance of the Taiyou Empire towards Terran national interests, trading relations with foreign nation-states, and terrorist attacks worldwide. It has not done so.
Instead, Prime Minister Cranford chooses to use rhetoric -- the same rhetoric of sovereignty, liberty, and equality that marked the formation of the Terran government after gaining independence from the Tripartite occupation. Political rhetoric is an effective and compelling tool during election campaigns and state speeches, but it is ineffective and powerless when faced with the necessity of actually administrating a government. Repeated affirmations of Terran sovereignty can only go so far while Terran sovereignty is being violated by hostile forces and Cranford finds himself unable to do anything to effectively stop those violations.
The incompetence in our elected officials is astounding. Minister of Justice Sisavang Khamtai is more concerned with public appearances than with developing and properly regulating Terran courts and legal practices, as evidenced by his role in the international incident surrounding Miles Hagan and Georgio Fazekas, which would have been better handled with an international coalition and international tribunal than as a means of securing his own political future.
In order to ensure the peaceful transition into our burgeoning democracy, we need to fill our own shoes. We need to step up from the childhood of occupation and the adolescence of political maneuvering and over-caution into the adult role of consolidating and maintaining a planetary government. We need to address regional concerns instead of pretending that religious and ethnic conflicts disappeared with Terran independence, and better district semi-autonomous regions on our world to reflect national interests. We need to develop an actionable foreign policy and pursue it aggressively, neither cowing to international bullies or appeasing greater powers. Until we have the respect of the great powers on our own terms, violations of our sovereignty will continue. Until our government pulls itself together, we run the risk of military coup, fracturing, and descent into totalitarianism.
What will be the Terran story? I am optimistic that with the good intentions of our Parliament and our electorate, our story of developing democracy will, unlike those described above, end not in tragedy or dictatorship, but in a well-established democratic government responsive to the needs of the people.
Luis Galdámez is the Attorney General of the Terran National Government. He completed his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1976 and a second doctorate from the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 1986.
(OOC: The events reported in the first part of this post were roleplayed by XavierDantius32, barney_fife, AzricanRepublic, and I, and this post ought not to be construed as god-modding. Because this is an IC posting, some of the information is inaccurate and intentionally. TAF is Terran Armed Forces, the Terran military; NPA is the Terran equivalent to the FBI, the National Police Agency. If you wish to be involved with some of these proceedings or future plotlines, simply contact me or any of the others listed. And if you're wondering, the history in the op-ed is all true, although you should seek scholarly sources if you are writing a paper rather than my roleplay post.)
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